International

3,400 firefighters deployed as wildfire displaces residents of Canadian city

August 18, 2023 7:00 am

Canadian firefighters are battling a ravaging wildfire that officials fear may grow into an unprecedented environmental disaster in the country.

On Thursday, about 20,000 residents of Yellowknife, the city where the fire is raging, left the town after an evacuation order was declared.

Cliff Chapman, wildfire service director, said the agency is already expecting its resources to be wrung out battling the challenging weather crisis.

“This weather event has the potential to be the most challenging 24 to 48 hours of the summer from a fire perspective,” Chapman said.

“We are expecting significant growth and we are expecting our resources to be challenged from north to south.”

He said about 3,400 firefighters have been deployed across the province with dozens from other jurisdictions such as Mexico and Costa Rica.

“The territories have never seen anything like this before in terms of wildfire … it’s an unimaginable situation for so many,” Mike Westwick, the northwest territories’ fire information officer, added.

The thick blanket of smoke in Yellowknife is threatening to waft into the United States, leading the Minnesota pollution control to issue a harmful air quality alert for residents.

Drought and extremely high temperatures have made wildfires more frequent across the world.

More than 100 people were killed in blazes that began last week on the Hawaii island of Maui while the Spanish island of Tenerife also has been battling what officials describe as “out of control” wildfires.

Although wildfires are frequent in Canada, officials say “this is Canada’s worst-ever wildfire season with more than 1,000 active fires burning across the country”.

According to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center (CIFFC), there have been 5,738 fires since April when they began. The fires have scorched 13.7 million hectares (33.9 million acres) of land.

The previous record wildfire season was in 1989 when 7.6 million hectares (18.8 million hectares) were torched.

Read TheCable’s explainer on what triggers a wildfire and how they impact air quality here.